The finance classroom meets the outside world (and vice-versa). Back away slowly from the computer with your hands up and your mind open, and with luck nobody gets hurt.

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Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Earnings Before Everything

Earnings and cash flows are two of the recurring themes in my classes (Securities analysis, corporate finance, and my student-managed fund). But, unfortunately, there are multiple "flavors" of each. For earnings (profits), there's gross, operating, and net, and for cash flows , there's free cash flow to equity (or to the firm), cash from operations, free cash flow from operations, and (for some folks), EBITDA.

Now I have a new one: "EBITDAGSAC", or "Earnings before Depreciation, Amortization, General , Sales, and Administrative, and Cost of goods sold". It's got a nice ring to it.